


The Difference

by willowcrowned



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Edward Elric dies, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Not tagged for major character death because Edward Elric dies offscreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25067419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcrowned/pseuds/willowcrowned
Summary: “You were in love with him,” Winry realizes, though she doesn’t know how it’s taken her this long to figure it out. She’s not mad; she knows what it’s like to be in love with Edward Elric. It’s not something you can stop— it's not something you ever want to stop. And then, quietly, because Roy deserves to know, “He was in love with you too.”Or, Ed dies. Two of the people who loved him the most try to cope.
Relationships: Roy Mustang/Winry Rockbell, past Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, past Winry Rockbell/Edward Elric
Comments: 9
Kudos: 54





	The Difference

Winry doesn’t cry at the funeral; Ed wouldn’t have wanted her to. It’s not like he’d ever gotten the opportunity to tell her as much, but she knows— knew— him well enough to know that that’s what he would have wanted. That happens when you’ve loved someone your entire life; you know what they want even when they’re gone. 

She hasn’t cried at all in the past two weeks. Whenever she’s felt the urge, she’s gone to the kitchen and stared out the window at the shed he had been building, the shed that is only half put up and will never be finished. He had wanted so badly to do it— to build something for her and the kids. He had made plans and cut wood and Winry had watched smiling as he completely failed to do it right over and over, knowing that she could have done it in half a day. Ed never had much of a talent for architecture or mechanics; he was always more of a big picture guy. Small things like the length of nails or availability of screws never bothered him. If they had, the first, third, and seventh attempts wouldn’t have collapsed in on themselves. 

Winry has stared more at the shed in the past two weeks than she has in the five years since Ed started putting it up, after Trisha had been born and Nina started to walk and he realized that it might be dangerous to leave all his alchemical notes out in the house where they could be covered in hands sticky from apple juice. Of course, the shed had never been finished, so he hadn’t ever gotten around to putting the notes away. 

Ed’s notes are still scattered all over their bedroom, shoved into the sock drawer or under the bed or under the soles of the heels Winry has only ever worn twice. He’d put them everywhere, shoving them absentmindedly into the closest available ‘secret’ spot whenever he’d gotten distracted. Two and a half weeks ago, she’d gone to fold laundry and found a sheet covered in hastily scribbled writing about sulfuric acid taped to the bottom of the laundry basket and she’d added it to the list of things to yell about to Ed when he got home. Yesterday, she’d opened the freezer to find something about nitroglycerin scrawled on a sheet of her best stationary stuffed underneath the ice cream and she’d cried for an hour. 

It’s almost funny how Ed had ended up having to die to get out of cleaning up after himself. It’s almost funny, but it’s not. 

The Führer comes to the funeral. Winry hadn’t really expected him to. He and Ed had been close, she knows that, but he’s still the Führer and he has a country to run; how important could Ed have really been to him? Ed had always had that funny effect on people, though. He’d come crashing into your life, swearing and destroying things, and you’d do anything to keep him there. 

Ed had ended up spending a lot of time in Central, eventually. After the Promised Day, he’d started dropping in on the way to or from Resembool, spending a week or two bugging Roy, and at some point he’d started coming at random, showing up at his house in the middle of the night and letting himself in through the window despite his perfectly good key. She’d never joined Ed on those trips, at first because she had been busy and she wasn’t the sort of person who felt like she could show up unannounced to anyone’s house, regardless of Ed’s cavalier attitude towards it, and later because she had kids and traveling with them was a nightmare she didn’t want to attempt more than she had to. 

Winry still feels weird calling him Roy, but it feels weirder not to. You don’t call your husband’s best friend ‘Sir Führer’ or ‘Mr. Mustang,’ even if he is the most powerful person in Amestris. Ed, of course, had bypassed all the issues with names by simply calling him ‘that bastard,’ but Ed had the ability to get away with anything by virtue of being himself. 

Ed’s casket is lowered into the ground in front of the small crowd of people who had known him and been close enough to make it. Years ago, when he and Winry were writing out their will, he’d sworn that he would come back from the grave if they buried him next to Hohenheim. Instead, the casket is placed next to his mother. Winry had insisted on that, even though the casket is empty— even though there hadn’t been enough left to bury. 

The strangest thing is that Al isn’t there. Al was a part of their group— a part of their family— and now he’s not there to say goodbye to Ed. It’ll be months before he even hears. Xing is far, and the house is too full of Ed for her to stay in it much longer. Al will understand; he always does. 

She stands there, hand in hand with both of her kids, silently watching the earth cover the empty casket. Soon enough, they start tugging on her hands, begging her permission to leave. They’re bored, after all, and to them the funeral is just another weird adult thing. They may be old enough to know that their dad is dead, but they still can’t understand that he’s gone. Mourning seems pointless if you think someone will come back. 

“Go inside,” Winry tells them softly. “Nina, there’s still some juice in the fridge and crackers if you or Trisha need a snack.” 

The two of them run off together, not giggling— they can tell that everyone is sad— but lively. Winry’s heart breaks for them. She knows what it’s like to watch your parents walk away. She knows what it’s like for your only real memory of them to be the backs of their heads as they walk away. They still have her, of course, but it’s not the same. They’ll never have Ed again. 

The funeral finishes and most people leave. A few people stay to pay their respects—people Ed had helped out, or people who had babysat them when they were young, or people who had simply had Ed imprint himself on their lives in his own peculiar way— but those people wander off too, eventually. In the end, it’s just Winry and Roy standing on either side of Ed’s grave. 

“I’m sorry.” When Roy speaks, his voice is cracked and rough. He’s been crying. 

Winry’s heart breaks a little more, because here is someone else that Ed left behind without meaning to. It had just been a routine trip to Drachma— going to visit some people and check up on a few others’ research— and then he’d accidentally gotten caught up in a border skirmish, and he hadn’t left, because of course he hadn’t, because he’s Ed and he never turns—turned— his back on people who needed him. It’s why Winry loves, had loved, will always love him. 

“Me too,” Winry says quietly. She looks back up at their house and imagines Trisha and Nina running around, drawing circles and finding screws to play with and wreaking general havoc. “Would you like to come in?” 

“No,” Roy says, voice shuddering. He looks at the house. “I don’t think— I met him there. Without him...” 

Winry nods. “I know,” she says, swallowing around the lump in her throat. She wishes she could stay here— wishes her kids could grow up where she did— but she couldn’t stay here, not if all the world begged her to. 

They’re silent for a while more. 

“He’s dead,” Roy says. Winry glances at him to see a face clinging to protective disbelief, unable to face the truth. “When I got the letter, I thought it was a mistake.” 

Winry hadn’t. Winry had been expecting the letter since he was a twelve-year-old who decided to enlist in the military. 

“It feels wrong to be angry at him,” Winry says. “He was just... being Ed.” 

Roy looks at her and smiles a broken thing of a smile. “I kept wishing he wouldn’t for so long.” 

Winry lets out a choked laugh. “I know what you mean.” 

“I’m sorry,” Roy says again. “You loved him.” 

Winry swallows again and very determinedly does not break down. “So did you.” 

Roy shakes his head and takes a big, shuddering, breath. “It’s not— it’s not the same thing. You had him. For real.” 

Winry lets out a small snort of surprise and disbelief. “I always thought the same about you.” She pauses and takes a deep breath, willing her hands to stop trembling. “He was always some different part of himself around you— some part I could never get to.” 

“He loved you,” Roy’s voice breaks. “With every part of his being.” 

Winry steps over to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “You— you too. You should have seen him, sometimes. He would come back from Central and be— alive, I guess, is the word for it. You made him alive.” 

“Yes, well,” Roy says, voice thick with emotion. “So did you.” 

Winry reaches out carefully, waiting for him to flinch away. When he doesn’t, she gathers him up in her arms gently and hugs him. He’s shaking, she realizes, so she holds him tighter and lets him bury his face in her hair. 

“You were in love with him,” Winry realizes, though she doesn’t know how it’s taken her this long to figure it out. She’s not mad; she knows what it’s like to be in love with Edward Elric. It’s not something you can stop— it's not something you ever want to stop. And then, quietly, because Roy deserves to know, “He was in love with you too.” 

Ed had been in love with her for as long as she can remember, even if she hadn’t figured it out until he’d yelled to her about sharing half his life. But Ed had loved a lot of people and a lot of things, and how could she hold that against him, really, when she’d been the same. Neither of them were ever happy loving just one person— just one thing— so when he had started coming back from Central with the same look in his eyes that he got when he looked at her, Winry had known. She’d known and she’d loved Ed for it, because if anyone could be in love with two people and do it with the entirety of his being, it would be him. 

Then Roy breaks down, sobbing and clutching at her like she’s the only person who’s ever thought to do this for him— to hold him when he needs to be held. 

“I’m sorry,” Roy says in between gasps, “for hating you.” 

Winry’s throat is tight. Her huff of disapproval comes out choked. “You were perfectly within your rights to hate me.” And he was. She had been the half of Ed’s life that he would never have, and she’d hated him for the same reason. 

Roy lets out a choked laugh at that. “I shouldn’t have, though. You made him happy.” 

“Yeah, well,” Winry says, trying her damndest to hold back the tears in her eyes, “so did you, and I— I hated you a bit too.” 

Roy lets out another choked laugh, then Winry is laughing with him, and then she’s crying and crying and crying. She wants to be sorry— wants to apologize to Ed for crying over him— but Ed is dead and gone, blown up in some Drachman border camp, and she’s still here with two kids who don’t even understand that they don’t have a father anymore. 

Roy wraps his arms around her, pulling her closer, and it’s a bit awkward, like he doesn’t remember how to do it, but she collapses in to his embrace anyways, and they stay like that: leaning on each other and crying, each relying on the other to keep from falling. 

Winry, Nina, and Trisha, move to Central a month later. It would have been sooner, but she needed to sort through Ed’s things and Ed’s things were everywhere, scattered all over the house in piles that would never be touched again. Winry barely made it through, in the end. Half the time she’d see something and start crying and she wouldn’t stop until she was fast asleep later that night. 

She started to see Nina and Trisha wandering into the rooms Ed used to frequent, already opening their mouths to tell him something before realizing that wasn’t there. Winry did the same thing, except she also woke up in the middle of the night expecting to feel the dip in the mattress next to her. She’s still always surprised when it isn’t there. He had always come back in the spring, after all; the chirping of the birds had meant Ed would be home. And now it doesn’t. 

One time, Trisha and Nina had walked in on her crying as she sorted through his socks, of all the stupid things. They had blinked at her with wide, gold, intelligent eyes, and she had known that soon— very soon— she would have to tell them about human transmutation and how their dad had lost his leg, lest they make the same mistake. 

Soon, but not yet. She doesn’t know how to yet. 

Their place in Central is nice, thanks to Winry’s years of dedicated customers and rich commissioners. They’re just on the outskirts of an old neighborhood, where trees line the avenues and roots spill up through the sidewalks. It’s quiet there, but not like the country. There are no sheep, no empty nights with no sounds in the winters. Here, there is always a car and some chatter and the buzz of the streetlights. 

Even better, it has a large garden, every inch of it filled with flowers from the previous owner. Winry is glad of that. She’s always loved plants, but her heart isn’t in gardening right now. Creating life— helping it grow— is beyond her. 

Roy visits on their third day. How the Führer managed to get away from his job and security detail just to visit them, she’ll never know, but she appreciates it. She needs the company. 

Nina and Trisha are excited about it too. They’ve met Roy a few times and he’s always smiled at them and asked them about automail and alchemy (‘fishing for possible recruits,’ Ed had always claimed, though Winry had argued that it was more like calculating possible future damage to Amestris). 

Winry can see the shock on his face when he walks in and sees their big, clever, golden eyes. She feels it too, sometimes, when she wakes up still thinking that Granny is in the next room and Ed and Al are going to come over tomorrow so all three of them can read books and eat cookies together under the tree outside her house. 

The shock leaves, though, when they smile, and Winry knows it’s because they smile like her. Ed had always had a sort of clever smirk when he wasn’t serious; his genuine smiles had been small and quiet. Nina and Trisha are her kids too, though, and they have huge beaming grins that match hers. 

Winry ushers Roy into the kitchen, promising with a subtle look that the kids will get bored of him in a few minutes and stop pestering him. He doesn’t seem to mind, though, even when they keep asking him to transmute things for them. 

“How can you do that?” Trisha asks with wonder when he takes a piece of a cardboard box and makes it in to a stunning miniature lotus. “You don’t need a circle?” 

Roy’s eyes dart up to Winry’s, surprised and scared, and she shakes her head. He must understand what she means, because after a moment the corners of his mouth soften and he gives her a look that means ‘I know’ and ‘It’s alright’ and ‘I’ll help you’. A weight drops off Winry’s shoulders and she realizes she hadn’t remembered how much of a relief it is to have another adult with you, especially one who can help with things you never bothered to learn. 

Later, when Nina and Trisha are trying to come up with the circle for making a flower out of cardboard in the living room, she asks him about human transmutation and the gate. Ed and Al had never told her— they’d been too ashamed at first, and later they’d just wanted to forget it. 

Roy tells her about Truth and the Gate and how it feels to see the knowledge of the universe and know that something will be taken away. When he looks up, he sees the fear on her face and he promises he’ll help explain it to them. 

“Are you sure?” Winry asks, because she didn’t even expect him to tell her anything, let alone offer to talk about it with her kids. 

Roy nods, his mouth a bit tight, but he smiles when he looks at her. “The rest of my day is free anyways.” 

Winry knows that what he really means is ‘I can’t see them go through the same thing he did.’ 

She calls Nina and Trisha into the kitchen, and they bring their transmutation circle and cardboard and show Roy that they can make a flower too. Theirs is a tulip, and considerably less detailed than Roy’s was, but it’s something no five and seven year old should be able to do. Winry looks at Roy and Roy looks at Winry and they both are terrified at what Nina and Trisha might be able to do in a few years. Ed and Al had been the same way. 

Winry starts. She tells them about how Trisha (and little Trisha’s eyes grow bright at the mention of her namesake) had died when their father and their uncle were young, how Ed and Al had been brilliant, just as clever as Nina and Trisha are now. (They preen at this. They know they’re smart, but they think that their dad is probably the smartest man in the world.) Then she tells them how Ed and Al had tried to bring their mother back. 

Nina and Trisha have questions, so many questions, and most of them alchemy related. That’s where Roy takes over. 

She can tell it hurts him, watching her kids listen to him with the same look Ed would get when he talked about alchemy. It hurts for her and she and Ed hadn’t even talked alchemy. But that's what he and Roy would do— sit around and talk about old books that Ed had ‘liberated’ from some musty old collector’s library— and Ed would have been rapt and clever and curious and beautiful, and Winry knows that now Roy has to see that same look in the eyes of his children and be reminded over and over that Ed is truly gone. 

There’s nothing Winry can do, really, but she takes his hand and gives him a sad smile anyways so that he knows she understands. His eyes, dark and bleak and far away, snap back to the present, and they warm a little, and he smiles his own sad smile as well. 

He answers Nina and Trisha’s questions in as much detail as he can manage without giving anything important away, then he asks if they know what equivalent exchange means. They both shout that, yes, they do! Roy looks at them with serious, sad, eyes and then asks them very quietly if they know what the equivalent exchange for a human soul is. The two of them frown at this. 

“Another human soul?” Nina offers. 

Roy nods, slowly and horribly, because Ed’s kids are Ed’s kids, and they are brilliant in all senses of the word and that chills him to his bones. 

He tells them how the thing Ed and Al made hadn’t even been their mother— how it had just been a non-functioning body without the spark of life— and how Ed and Al had paid dearly for it anyways. 

Roy and Winry can see Nina and Trisha doing the calculations in their heads, starting to consider that maybe, maybe, their dad had just done it wrong and they could do it right. They could bring him back and he could see what they had done and he would be so, so proud of them and their mom would cry but she would be smiling and they would finally be alright. 

“No,” Roy says, cutting off the train of thought before it can really get going. “They didn’t do it wrong. I saw their work.” 

Nina and Trisha’s mouths drop open and they start babbling, asking about one equation or another, and the array they had used and if you construct cells piece by piece or if— 

Roy shakes his head sadly and tells them there’s no way to do it, and he tells them how he knows. He describes Truth to them, and for the first time he is relieved because he can finally see fear and understanding blooming in their eyes. 

Then, finally, Trisha asks, “But I thought dad couldn’t do alchemy?” 

Winry smiles a tight smile because she misses Ed and she loves him and she’s still so proud of him for everything he’d done, and she explains that he gave up his alchemy just to get his brother back, and that they’d both nearly died in the process. 

She looks at her kids’ somber faces, then over at Roy’s look of relief mixed with longing, and she can tell that it’s over— that they won’t try to bring their dad back. Roy looks back at her and she takes his hand and squeezes it. He smiles the same small, soft, smile that Ed had, and she feels tears gather in her eyes. 

“Thank you,” she says later, when he’s on the doorstep and the cool evening air is brushing past them with the scent of lilacs. 

“Of course,” Roy says. “Always.” 

And Winry can tell he means it. 

It is more than a year later, when Roy has been over for dinner many times and Nina and Trisha have started falling asleep on him and demanding he tuck them into bed, that he and Winry sit on her back porch and look towards where Resembool lies, miles and miles and miles beyond where they can see. They sit there, just the two of them, on the porch swing Winry built, and Winry moves her hand to hold Roy’s. 

Roy smiles and tilts his head the way he does when he’s finished thinking about something and he likes the answer, and then he kisses her. 

Winry starts crying when his lips meet hers and she cries some more when she kisses him back, but it’s alright, really, because he doesn’t let go, and somewhere along the way the tears of mourning get so mixed with the tears of joy that she can’t tell the difference.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to p.t.k. for beta-ing for me.
> 
> Kudos appreciated, comments adored, and concrit craved.


End file.
